The Truth About ICE and CBP Page 1 About United We Dream United We Dream is the largest immigrant youth-led community in the country. We create welcoming spaces for young people – regardless of immigration status – to support, engage, and empower them to make their voice heard and win! We have an online reach of over 4 million and are made up of over 400,000 members as well as 5 statewide branches and over 100 local groups across 28 states. Over 60% of our members are womxn and 20% identify as LGBTQ. We are made up of fearless youth fighting to improve the lives of ourselves, our families and our communities. Our vision is a society which celebrates our diversity and we believe in leading a multi-ethnic, intersectional path to get there. Whether we’re organizing in the streets, building cutting edge technology systems, opening doors for LGBTQ immigrant youth, clearing pathways to education, stopping deportations or creating alliances across social movements, United We Dream puts undocumented immigrant youth in the driver’s seat to strategize, innovate and win. Published February, 2019 The Truth About ICE and CBP Page 2 Acknowledgements As the largest network of immigrant youth in the nation, United We Dream has successfully stopped hundreds of deportations and is deeply embedded in the communities we serve. Our commitment to the protection of the community as well as our commitment to innovation has created unique data sets and avenues for qualitative analysis, which are outlined in this report. The data and stories included in this report were made possible by immigrant youth and families who had the courage to tell the truth and fight for their right to live unafraid. The report’s editors and co-authors are Greisa Martinez Rosas and Sanaa Abrar. Luzhilda Campos and Cynthia Garcia currently coordinate the United We Dream Deportation Defense program and, along with Ambar Pinto (former coordinator of the program) and United We Dream’s regional deportation defense teams and members in cities across the nation, collected the stories and data featured in this report. We are grateful for the consent of the families and loved ones of Miguel Reyes Garcia, Manuel Zhinin, Edder Sanchez, Daniel Ramirez, and Jorge Sarango whose stories are profiled in this report. Adrian Reyna developed and administers United We Dream’s Notifica App. Roberto Cabrera, Allison Verrilli, Henry Manning, Eliana Perozo conducted research and drafting in support of this report. Alex Wang, Andrea Taverna, Nancy Yun Tang from Yale University reviewed and edited the report. Jose Magaña-Salgado of Masa Group assisted in the drafting of this report, with assistance from Dalal Hillou and Katherine Montañez-Montes. This report is dedicated to the nation’s undocumented people, who are #HereToStay. The Truth About ICE and CBP Page 3 Table of Contents 05 Executive Summary 07 Methodology 08 Deeply Flawed: A Primer on Our Nation’s Immigration System 14 Built on a Rotting Foundation: A Historical Perspective of Immigration Enforcement 17 Congress’s Funding Fuel the Cancerous Growth of ICE and CBP 20 The Engines of Our Nation’s Deportation System 35 Impact on Immigrant Youth, their Families, and Communities of Color 41 Recommendations 49 Glossary 52 Endnotes Executive Summary Donald Trump has dedicated his political career increases, Executive Orders, regulations, policy to transforming the nation into a place wholly guidance, attacks on the agencies’ critics and unwelcome and dangerous for immigrants and leadership changes. people of color. During the past two years, he and his administration have steadily advanced While the agencies have steadily grown in power that racist agenda through rhetoric, the through the last two administrations, Trump has encouragement of vigilantism and the use of a used them as an extension of his ideology that massive and highly political armed wing of the immigrants should be driven out and kept out government built for mass deportation. at any cost. The administration has given free rein to ICE and CBP to terrorize, dehumanize, This report tells the story of the human impact, and abuse immigrant communities and has uncontrolled growth and power of the nation’s even turned the U.S. military into an extension deportation apparatus under Donald Trump of the agencies’ mission. The administration has while also providing the policy rationale further militarized the southern border, targeted for Congress to dismantle U.S. Immigration all undocumented immigrants for deportation, and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. incarcerated tens of thousands of children in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and detention camps, demanding increases to the enact legislation to turn their targets into over 400,000 immigrants held in camps every citizens. The report includes concrete policy year and is trying to prevent local and state recommendations for Congress, federal jurisdictions from protecting their local law agencies, local governments, advocates and the enforcement agencies from being drafted into next President of the United States on the way the deportation machinery. forward. This groundbreaking report is the first of its It was developed by the young leaders of United kind - developed by immigrant youth and We Dream who for years have worked to stop directly impacted people - and uses both deportations, empower youth and immigrant qualitative narratives and quantitative data communities and enact policy change while collected through the wide range of channels also tracking and analyzing the patterns and that United We Dream has developed over practices of deportation agents. It includes years of community organizing, fighting to stop analyses of hundreds of first hand accounts and deportations and advocating for change. is the most thorough analysis of its kind ever produced. At a time when the data being released by the deportation force agencies is becoming more The “deportation force” is primarily made scarce and more suspect than ever, United We up of the ICE and CBP, which the current Dream’s unique contribution is critical for a administration has bolstered through budget balanced discourse. The Truth About ICE and CBP Page 5 The report’s analyses and findings include: • The current administration’s role in transforming non-enforcement agencies • Data from the United We Dream into cogs in the nation’s deportation MigraWatch telephone hotline for FY machine, including attacks on immigrants 2018 regarding 144 unique reports of through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration ICE and CBP activity across 24 states and Services and the undermining of collateral the District of Columbia, including direct agencies. evidence of the growth of enforcement activities fueled by this administration’s • An expose of the tactics that U.S. policies including the use of state and Immigration and Customs Enforcement local law enforcement in carrying out their and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agenda; home, community and workplace engage in to manipulate the regular raids; as well as enforcement actions at Congressional appropriations process, courthouses and other locations. Congress’s culpability in fueling the fiscal growth of both agencies and the fiscal • Data demonstrating the widespread enabling of the unfettered growth of the adoption of the United We Dream nation’s deportation machinery. community protection mobile app called Notifica, which allows community • An overview of U.S. Immigration and members to prevent deportation, Customs Enforcement’s unfettered including the use of the app by 15,000 targeting of immigrant communities, individuals so far. including the death of prosecutorial discretion, the expansion of immigration • Data from multiple nationwide surveys raids, enforcement at sensitive locations, of immigrant youth, cataloguing their and war against state and local responses, feelings, and activities jurisdictions. in response to this administration’s enforcement regime—including the • An analysis of U.S. Customs and Border commitment of immigrant youth to Protection’s continued growth under participate in our civic process to protect this administration and catalogue of its their communities. abuses, including militarization of the southern border, attacks on asylum, and • Concrete recommendations and policy murder of peaceful migrants. proposals for state and local jurisdictions, Congress, federal agencies, the next President, and partners to join with immigrant youth to push back against Donald Trump. • A historic examination of the racist and xenophobic roots of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, including how anti- immigrant sentiment shaped their creation and continue to enable their unfettered operation. The Truth About ICE and CBP Page 6 Methodology This report incorporates original research previous surveys provide a unique insight into conducted by United We Dream members, economic; social; and community contributions affiliates, and community members as well as of DACA recipients. This report incorporates scholarly research and government data. those insights, including highlighting the psychological impacts of enforcement on In 2016, United We Dream launched immigrant youth and their families. This MigraWatch, a telephone hotline to enable report also incorporates previous scholarship community members to report immigration conducted by United We Dream on immigration enforcement activities in their local community enforcement.4 and obtain resources to form local groups to monitor,